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People on this site post WAY too many abortion debates.
We have all heard the arguments for and against abortion.
Pro-choice: Women get to choose if they want to keep on burdening themselves with a child, the fetus does not count as a human being, why should a woman bring a child into the world if it's just going to be a painful and miserable life, etc.
Pro-life: The fetus does count as a human being therefore to kill it would be murder, if women don't want a baby they should be more careful, etc.
I think it's obvious that these arguments are going absolutely nowhere . As humans, we are extremely stubborn and very rarely admit we're wrong, especially on the internet. Whenever someone posts a "Should abortion be illegal” argument, all the Pro-choice people post on the disagree side and the Pro-life people post on the agree side. Both of them use the exact same arguments over and over, and no one is convinced of anything. Therefore, I propose we start posting NEW arguments for a change.
I think the prochoicers have clearly won this debate several times, and I think it is weird that prolifers continue to attack just to end up being defeated.
Yeah there are a fair number of them. It's a hot topic. But, ironically, that means this debate is also an abortion debate. Albeit a debate about abortion debates, but still under the same umbrella.
I find it very repetitive and unproductive. I'm someone that is right in the middle. I'm completely torn and could be persuaded either way. There's never really been a persuasive argument on here either way in my opinion. Maybe we should move on.
Perhaps if the politicians didn't try to pass more than 1,000 bills about a woman's reproductive rights just last year this subject would be old. We know that the majority of Americans support choice. The politicians have yet to catch up. Until they do, it is a viable argument.
Its difficult for me to think that if any other creature had the facilities that a fetus of 20 weeks has then we wouldn't worry about exterminating it to make a human right better. What a strong with is that the fetus has a potential for life and whether or not this potential is significant in saying that a mother should feel morally obigated to continue with the pregnancy (I am quite sure that abortion should not be illegal).
Furthermore, I struggle to get a grasp on what a fetus is like. I'd be interesting to know what characteristics it actually has when it is aborted.
What a strong with is that the fetus has a potential for life and whether or not this potential is significant in saying that a mother should feel morally obigated to continue with the pregnancy (I am quite sure that abortion should not be illegal).
I just wanted to point out, potential for life (being a person) does not equate to actually being a person. If that were the case, then sperm and egg cells should have legal rights too, which is rather ridiculous.
A human being in the zygote stage of their life is much closer to personhood than a single sperm and egg cell - when they left alone and un-united.
True or False:
Obviously true. It is at a later stage of development, than the single sperm or egg. I'm not sure what this proves though. A sperm is closer to personhood than a skin cell too.
I've already said this before, if the legal definition of a person is just the body of a human, brain being optional, then clearly the legal definition needs work.
I've already said this before, if the legal definition of a person is just the body of a human, brain being optional, then clearly the legal definition needs work.
Saying it needs to be changed and actually changing it are not the same thing.
You have been shown legal precedents which form the basis for why 'brains' and brain activity are not required for personhood or for our laws to protect the human beings (persons) rights.
In my opinion, you have a much larger task ahead of you (changing the legal definitions for personhood) than we do with overturning Roe.
Saying it needs to be changed and actually changing it are not the same thing.
Yes, this is obvious. Your failure to realize that the definition is lacking, is mind boggling to me.
You have been shown legal precedents which form the basis for why 'brains' and brain activity are not required for personhood or for our laws to protect the human beings (persons) rights.
And I've already explained to you how everything that we are, is because of our brains. You choose to ignore that. Perhaps you think that the legal definition somehow changes reality? The truth is independent of what the legal definition is. All you want to do is keep going back to the legal definition.
Again. You have yet to provide a scientific definition of the word person that would exclude a child (human being/ organism) who happens to be in the earliest days of their life.
I agree, but what made me laugh was that even though this was a popular debate, all of the other popular debates showing on the home page were about abortion... It was hilarious.
Way too many is insinuating that they are being posted with no interest in them. The fact that people are always commenting on them is evidence that their is not too many, but instead there are just enough.
Abortion is a topic that has no one definite answer and the possible answers are worthy of debate.
Not sure it is a legal right to have an abortion. I don't think it says that anywhere in law. It is merely that we all have a right to do whatever we want that is not illegal.
It's a fact that I neither like or appreciate but...
The right to an abortion has been upheld by our lawmakers on more than one occasion. It's all part of the same mess that we anti-abortios and pro-lifers are trying to undo.
"A straw man or straw person, also known in the UK as an Aunt Sally,[1][2] is a type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position."
Basically you distort, twist, or otherwise change your opponents argument so that they look clearly wrong, immoral, or easy to defeat, etc.
Had you taken the time to do some investigating and reading, you would see that my observation was no strawman at all.
To my knowledge, this is a fringe view. Regarding the national debate on the issue, most people deny that a fertilized egg is a human being, and state that it does not achieve personhood until sometime later in the pregnancy. I'm pretty certain it is not "we know its a person, but abortion should still be legal".
I'm pretty certain it is not "we know its a person, but abortion should still be legal".
I have encountered dozens of women in my time fighting against abortion who have proclaimed that if and when personhood for children in the womb is established and abortion is banned, they will help provide illegal abortions themselves to anyone who wants one.
Just as I have had women who (like Dana) don't care that it's a child and think it should remain legal anyway.
My point was that it is not one of the "core" arguments in the national debate on the topic.
I got the impression that you were classifying the entire pro choice crowd into "we know its a child, and we know its murder, but womens rights are more important". My apologies.
I do realize that Dana considers it a child, and still thinks it should remain legal anyways. I had a discussion with her about it. She rationalizes it by saying that in some cases, abortion is "for the greater good". I personally don't agree with this position.
I think the vast majoirty of pro-abortion advocates know that an abortion kills a child and just don't care (for whatever reason) that it does.
I disagree on this. I think the majority of the pro choice crowd do not consider a newly fertilized egg a person, and that they believe it becomes a person somewhere down the line during the pregnancy.
No-one can be so fucking ignorant as to look at the pictures that we have all looked at and conclude that abortions do not kill a child.
The way that something looks does not make it a person. I'm living proof that you're incorrect on this statement.
Let's list the things other than just the looks which support our claims that a child in the womb is a child.
It depends on what your definition of child is. Child Definitions Dictionary.com lists fetus, which I agree with only after a certain period of development has occurred. Primarily the brain and its development.
1. Offspring...young... we agree on this. We disagree on whether its a person, like you or I.
2 & 3, we already agree on.
4. It is the beginning of its life, but I don't believe it qualifies as a person yet.
5. It's life as an organism, yes. Itself, as a person, no. This is dependent upon the brain.
It's interesting to me too.... that you keep skirting the fact that it's the young of the parents who created them.
I try to be careful when using the words of whomever I'm debating. More than once on this site and in real life they have twisted my words against me to mean something I did not mean. It's just dishonest debate tactics in my opinion.
As we are debating the laws and we have been.... wouldn't it be wise to use the legal definitions? After all, those are going to be the definitions used in the courts to argue for and against Roe (legal precident)... correct?
Well ITT, we haven't specifically been debating the laws. I don't think it would be wise to use the already established legal definitions, because if they are what you say they are, then they are clearly flawed and do not reflect the most recent science on the matter.
When a case is brought before the courts, legal precedent (Stare Decisis) is always taken into consideration.
When Roe was decided, the Justices entertained the idea of personhood for children in the womb and how that would affect the case (Roe). At the time, there were no laws on the books which recognized the personhood of children in the womb in any meaningful way.
With the passing of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act? That changed.
It wasn't that any of the definitions changed. It was how those existing definitions were applied to the children and how that act establishes their rights to not be murdered.
The question here is whether the moment of conception is when a person is formed. The laws as they are established right now do not matter in this context. The law does not dictate the universe. Whether the newly fertilized fetus is a person or not, the universe has already "decided". We are using science to find out what the answer is, and the science is telling us that it is likely not possible for any form of "consciousness" to occur before the 20th week of pregnancy.
Thus, if the brain is not sufficiently developed to give rise to a form of consciousness that we can call a "person", then it shouldn't be called a person entitled to basic human rights.
Again, you're just trying to hide behind legal definition that support your views. I'm trying to look at the reality of the matter, as uncovered by science.
On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion (1973), Mary Anne Warren
""1.Consciousness (of objects and events external and/or internal to the being), and in particular the capacity to feel pain;
2.Reasoning (the developed capacity to solve new and relatively complex problems);
3.Self-motivated activity (activity which is relatively independent of genetic or direct external control);
4.The capacity to communicate, by whatever means, messages of an indefinite variety of types, that is, not just with an indefinite number of possible contents, but on indefinitely many possible topics;
5.The presence of self-concepts, and self-awareness, either individual or racial, or both.""
Here's more:
In light of this, Warren argues that a fetus cannot be said to be a person. This is because although a being need not display evidence of having all these qualities to be deemed a person, they would need to have at least one of them:
And here's something the author wrote:
"All we need to claim, to demonstrate that a fetus is not a person is that any being which [has none of these traits] is certainly not a person. I consider this claim to be so obvious that I think anyone who denied it, and claimed that a being [which had none of these traits] was a person all the same, would thereby demonstrate that he no notion at all of what a person is.'"
So only the courts are entitled to their own facts?
The scientific definitions for organisms allow for the organisms to have some time to develop the traits of a more mature member of their species.
In other words, it's not expected by science - that an organism be immediately able to think, feel or reproduce, walk, talk or breathe...
We do not mourn or value animal life as much as human life, collectively as a species at least.
I am not declaring that it is not an organism. It is an organism, it is the young of its parents. But it is not a person for the reasons I have listed previously.
1. Mrs. Warren did not cite any facts. She only expressed her opinions.
2. We have laws which treats them as both persons and non persons.
You can deny that they are person's all you want... but you can't deny the fact that we already have some laws which treat them as persons by making it a crime of murder to unjustly kill one.
1. Mrs. Warren did not cite any facts. She only expressed her opinions.
And on this issue where have the courts cited facts, and not legal opinion? Hmm?
You can deny that they are person's all you want... but you can't deny the fact that we already have some laws which treat them as persons by making it a crime of murder to unjustly kill one.
I get the impression that you think, deep down I secretly believe/know they are people, but that I'm in denial.
I don't know many of the specifics regarding the laws on abortion. I do believe I recall that the latest you can get an abortion in the United States is somewhere between 20-30 weeks into the pregnancy though.
While it's handy to be able to commit all of these to memory, it's probably easier to read through someones argument and just note if something doesn't really add up then go to the logical fallacy list to see what kind of fallacy they're making. Often times you don't even need to argue in favor of your position when you can just rip shreds in their arguments by highlighting how fallacious their argument is.
But, it also strengthens your own arguments if you can keep your use of logical fallacies to a minimum. To completely eliminate logical fallacies from ones arguments is, however, almost impossible.
I am not saying people are not interested in it, or that it is not a vitally important topic. It would be one thing if people were presenting new arguments for the subject, but the fact is they're not.
It would be one thing if people were presenting new arguments for the subject, but the fact is they're not.
I guess that's true. The definition of insanity is to try the same thing continuously expecting different results. These abortion debates always go the same way evidenced by the fact that they keep getting made.
I am not saying people are not interested in it, or that it is not a vitally important topic. It would be one thing if people were presenting new arguments for the subject, but the fact is they're not.
I read a lot of the other debates before I joined this site and you are wrong when you say that no new arguments are being presented.
Who before me used the legal language of the fetal homicide laws and the Unborn Victims of violence act to make a point that legalized abortion is inconsistent with those laws?
Who else pointed to anencephalic babies and their legal cases to argue against the claims that sapience or conciousness is required for personhood?
Who was the first to try to make anyone aware of the fact that an abortion meets the legal criteria for a non sexual child molestation?
Who before me was describing a child in the fetal stage of their life like that instead of Kowtowing to the pro-aborts and using their language to dehumanize them?
Who (before me) has even tried to set the record straight on what a pro-abort (by definition) really is?
If you think I'm just tooting my own horn here, you're wrong. I don't care what you think of me... You are also wrong when you say that new arguments are not being introduced.
I have no doubt that you have made some good, new, valid arguments for Pro-life. And as I have only just joined, I have not had the chance to look far back at older arguments for/against abortion.
However, what I see in the newer debates (i.e. The morning after pill, emergency contraception: do you support it's use?, This is a Child in the First Days of their Life) is not rational discussion, it's bickering. Snide comments such as,
"I do. I feel if women don't want to burden themselves with a child they should be allowed to end it, at any phase = Pro-Abortion."
"His was a pro-abortion sentiment (expression) if ever there was one.
So, "Fuck you" back.
Your declaration that you are pro-abortion does not come as a surprise to me at all. Though it does make your outrage seem curious."
"This is some thing we can agree on.
Many women think it's a legal right to kill their children with abortion and people like me see it as a crime against humanity.
Frankly, I'm surprised there are not even more debates created about it."
You have taken my comments out of the context in which they were used.
By omitting the comments I was responding to and the history (past exchanges) that set the tone... of course, some of those comments will come off as non-productive.
I don't make my comments wth the expectation that they might be taken out of context and used against me a some later date. I say what I mean and mean what I say at the time that I post it.
No new arguments in anything you just said. Literally every idea has been mentioned on multiple sites for years. Just language like "pro-aborts" that leads to ignorance not discussion.
The rest of your bizarre posts are mentioned by the AHA group all the time. And your pro-abort language still makes you look like a kook, rather than someone who wants to discuss issues. Shall I call you a forced birther, because you want women enslaved to carry to term? How does that elicit conversation?